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Video: BP pleased with progress on new cap

Transcript of: BP pleased with progress on new cap

LESTER HOLT, anchor:After almost three months of setbacks, embarrassments and disappointments,
BP
is tonight cautiously saying its latest bold attempt to contain the oil leak is going well.
Twenty-four
hours after temporarily uncapping the well, sending thousands of additional barrels of oil freely flowing into the gulf, engineers say they are making good progress attaching a more effective cap and new containment equipment. The hope is that before the week is over, the new system could start capturing more oil than ever, perhaps all of it. But for now
BP
will only say
one step at a time
.
NBC
's
Anne Thompson
remains on watch for us in
Venice
,
Louisiana
, with the very latest on the operation.
Anne
, good evening.

ANNE THOMPSON reporting:Good evening,
Lester
.
Crews
are working around the clock to put that new cap on the spewing well, a process that has had very few glitches. This afternoon, robotic vehicles maneuvered the first part of the sealing cap onto the top of the blowout preventer. It's called the transition spool, a 15,000-pound bridge that will ultimately connect the gushing pipe to the new cap. The second part of the cap will be positioned once the spool is attached. That could still be six days away.

Mr. KENT WELLS:We're pleased how it's going. I think we've received lots of criticism over this, you know, either being too optimistic or too pessimistic. But I think this -- in this particular case, we did an extensive amount of preparation work.

THOMPSON:And at this point,
BP
senior vice president
Kent Wells
says all that preparation is paying off. But the big question is once the system is in place and sending oil to the vessels on the surface, will it get all the crude?
Wells
was tentative.

Mr. WELLS:We just continue to ramp up that capacity, and somewhere along that line, whatever the flow is, we'll capture it all at some point.

THOMPSON:On the surface above, only the
Q4000
is collecting oil and burning it off, capturing just 8,000 barrels a day from a well that could be leaking up to 60,000. And yet, as it has for nearly three months, the oil continues to play hide and seek in the water. We are 44 miles from
Louisiana
's coast, two miles from the leak site, and even though more oil is gushing into the gulf, on this trip we have not seen any oil, not a ribbon, not a patch, not even a tar ball. But
on the other side
of the operation, we could see evidence of where the oil is as smoke from controlled burns of the crude were clearly visible in the afternoon sky. Now, along with all the new vessels that are out there to bring in that new equipment,
BP
has some 46 skimmers close to the
well head
to scoop up any oil

NEW ORLEANS — BP said Sunday that it is making progress on a delicate undersea operation to install a new containment cap on its blown-out well, and plans to activate a new oil-siphoning system later on Sunday.

"We're pleased with our progress," BP senior vice president Kent Wells told reporters on a conference call, reiterating that it will take four to seven days for undersea robots operating 1 mile below the sea surface to install the new containment system.

"We've tried to work out as many of the bugs as we can. The challenge will come with something unexpected," Wells said.

BP also announced Monday that the cost of dealing with the oil spill had risen to $3.5 billion. The oil company said that the figure included nearly $165 million paid to settle individual claims.

BP on Saturday removed the cap over the well as part of a plan to install a bigger capping system that can capture up to 80,000 barrels per day (3.4 million gallons), up from about 25,000 bpd previously.

BP is also making final safety checks on a new containment ship, the Helix Producer, which will be able to siphon up to 25,000 bpd from the well, Wells said. BP expects the vessel to begin processing oil later on Sunday.

BP's plan to ramp up oil collection capacity is expected to take two to three weeks. U.S. government experts have pegged the leak's flow at up to 60,000 bpd.

'Not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste'There's no guarantee of success for such a delicate operation, officials said, and the permanent fix of plugging the well from the bottom remains slated for mid-August.

"It's not just going to be, you put the cap on, it's done. It's not like putting a cap on a tube of toothpaste," Coast Guard spokesman Capt. James McPherson said.

Robotic submarines on Saturday removed the cap that had been placed on top of the leak in early June to collect the oil and send it to surface ships for collection or burning.

If tests show the new cap can withstand the pressure of the oil and is working, the Gulf region could get its most significant piece of good news since the April 20 explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers. Since then, between 88 million gallons and 174 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf, according to federal estimates.

It would be only a temporary solution to the catastrophe. Hope for permanently plugging the leak lies with two relief wells, the first of which should be finished by mid-August.

And the hurricane season that lasts through November could interfere. There are no storms forecast now, but if one blows through, the ships collecting the oil may have to leave and crude would spew again for days into the water.

The work was being closely monitored at the White House, where President Barack Obama is being briefed multiple times a day, senior adviser David Axelrod said on ABC television's "This Week" on Sunday.

"We have every reason to believe that this will work," he said. At the same time, Axelrod acknowledged that BP's engineers are in "uncharted waters" when it comes to dealing with the leak.

With the cap removed Saturday, oil flowed freely into the water, collected only by the Q4000 surface vessel, with a capacity of about 378,000 gallons.

That vessel should be joined Sunday by the Helix Producer, which has more than double the Q4000's capacity.

But the lag could be long enough for as much as 5 million gallons to gush into already fouled waters. Officials said 46 large skimmers had collected about 1 million gallons of oily water from the surface above the well site as of Sunday morning.

'Top Hat 10'
BP on Sunday said it had successfully removed the top flange that had only partially completed the seal with the old cap, almost a day earlier than a previous estimate.

Now that the top flange is removed, BP is considering whether it needs to bind together two sections of drill pipe that are in the gushing well head. The step following that involves lowering a 12-foot-long piece of equipment called a flange transition spool onto the well head and bolting it to the bottom flange still in place.

After the spool is bolted in place, the new cap — called a capping stack or "Top Hat 10" — can be mounted. The equipment, weighing some 150,000 pounds, is designed to fully seal the leak and provide connections for new vessels on the surface to collect oil. The cap has valves that can restrict the flow of oil and shut it in, if it can withstand the enormous pressure.

That will be one of the key items for officials to monitor, said Paul Bommer, a professor of petroleum engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

"If the new cap does work and they shut the well in, it is possible that part of the well could rupture if the pressure inside builds to an unacceptable value," Bommer wrote in an e-mail Saturday.

Ultimately, BP wants to have four vessels collecting oil within two or three weeks of the new cap's installation. If the new cap doesn't work, BP is ready to place a backup similar to the old one on top of the leak.

The company originally planned to bring the Helix Producer on site and install the new cap at different times, but combined the two following forecasts of calm weather for about seven to 10 days.

The new vessels will all be connected to the gusher through flexible hoses that will allow them to disconnect and sail away much quicker in the event of a hurricane. Prior to the new lineup at the site, officials estimated they would need five days to remove everything in advance of a major storm; the new setup should cut that to two.

The government estimates 1.5 million gallons to 2.5 million gallons of oil a day are spewing from the well, and the previous cap collected about 1 million gallons of that. With the new cap and the new containment vessel, the system will be capable of capturing 2.5 million gallons to 3.4 million gallons — essentially all the leaking oil, officials said.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

Map: Gulf oil spill trajectory

Interactive graphic animated trajectory Gulf of Mexico oil spill

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